The Cincinnati-filmed Carol premiered over the weekend at the Cannes Film Festival and received sterling, outstanding reviews that called it an instant Oscar contender and the most important high-profile gay drama to come out of American cinema since 2005’s Brokeback Mountain. The film is in competition at Cannes.
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt and directed by Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, I’m Not There), it features Cate Blanchett as an socialite who falls in love with a younger department-store clerk (Rooney Mara) in Manhattan. The film was shot here last year, using sites in Over-the-Rhine, Cheviot and other locales as stand-ins for a New York of old.
At Variety, the most important publication chronicling the entertainment business, critic Justin Chang said the film “should
have little trouble translating critical plaudits, especially for Cate Blanchett’s incandescent lead performance, into significant year-end attention.” Variety also revealed that the distributor, Weinstein Co., has set a Dec. 18 release date for Carol, a prime opening weekend for any film with Academy Award intentions.
Here is a link to the full Variety review.
Meanwhile, at indieWire — the most influential website for the independent-film industry (Carol was produced independent of the big Hollywood studios), Eric Kohn also gave a strong rave to the film.
“Carol funnels (themes) into a nuanced tale of mutual attraction that reflects a filmmaker and cast operating at the height of their powers, rendering complex circumstances in strikingly personal terms,” he said.
Besides Haynes, the only other U.S. director with a new film in competition at Cannes is Gus Van Sant, whose The Sea of Trees stars Matthew McConaughey and Ken Watanabe as two men who meet in Japan’s “Suicide Forest.” Its premiere was no so well-received — it was booed by the audience.
This article appears in May 13-19, 2015.